Hope Was Dead
by redleaveshavefallen
Summary: For Eridan, hope died a long time ago. Ever since he entered this dreaded cycle that had changed his life and his' self. But a glimmer of hope had reappeared right when he thought he was stuck. M for mature content, but nothing explicit. EriSol
1. The Cycle

((For clarification, this takes place with everyone a bit older, in a sort of humanstuck thing, or at least, one without blood castes or horns and such. Please enjoy.))

Somewhere down the line, Eridan knew his life went haywire. Everything crumbled and decayed, like one of so many ruins in his history books. He was only just starting to figure out where it went wrong, but he had a few assumptions. Either way, he knew the main core problem; his rut, his cycle.

It's not like he had always been like that; Eridan was, in fact, the type of guy that went into a relationship for love, not physical satisfaction. Not that he had many. In Junior High, he was very much alone, and he made all he could of it with his dramatics, successfully driving away the only two real relationships he ever had. This may have been the cause of it all, really. The day his long time girlfriend Feferi broke up with him.

They had been dating for some time, much longer than his first relationship with Vriska had gotten, and near the end of junior high Eridan had finally decided on bringing up the topic of a more serious, more physical relationship. The day he was going to ask, though, she decided they weren't meant to be. It broke him. It tore him up more than any fake drama could. He had really loved her.

That night there was a party, which he had been planning on inviting Fef too. He was miserable, and Roxy was drunk off martinis she got from the host's basement. It started with talking about wizards, it ended up in the bedroom of someone he didn't even know with Roxy moaning and Eridan wishing it were Fef.

He was depressed. He was disappointed. it was a mistake. Withdrawal. Fallout. He wanted to leave that day behind him, and never talk about it again. He didn't bet on Roxy drunkenly telling everyone that Eridan Ampora, the so hated and desperate man he was, was really good in bed.

It didn't matter that he had never done it before. Maybe it was instinct, or just all the 'research' he had done (he was a boy, after all). But suddenly everyone knew. His first year of high school, people were suddenly paying attention to him. they were _flirting_ with him. And for once in his life, Eridan thought he was popular, he was liked, and he was loved.

But after about two months, he knew it was the opposite. He wasn't loved at all. Sure, people were all over him now. He had a new classmate every week, wriggling under him and melting under his fingers, but soon they were gone. He had had guys and girls alike, all hearing from word of mouth and testing to see whether the rumors were true. He knew everyone's little quirks; the vulgarity, the purring, the moaning and screaming and clawing; the sudden weakness and obedience, the sudden take-charge focus and brutal command; the helplessness, the neediness, the begging that started to make Eridan cringe. He had heard a hundred names screamed out that were not his own. Once the denial finally started to fade and the fireworks went out, Eridan could see it plainly; they didn't love him. If anything, he was more lonely than he was before. they were manipulating him, using his desperate nature, toying with his feelings and his body and his long for an escape. They were manipulative, abdominal cur, horrible scum of the earth. He began to hate these people. hated them like a king hated the peasants, like a high-one hated the low-ones, like a God hated the ones who praised and begged at his feet. But suddenly, no matter how much he hated them, he was so dependent of them. He was soon having sex with these people to cope with the hard, grueling facts of his reality, his loneliness, his betrayal and servitude towards the wretched fools. He had unwittingly become their slave even as they treated him like a deity. He became addicted.

He was more woken up when Sekret came, the first of his only two real relationships. They never really had a strong bond, but it was a bond all the same, and it brought back at least a few pleasant memories. So when she came over to him suddenly, after so long, it really wasn't hard to get fooled all over again. He gave her her way. Out of all the manipulators, she was the most manipulative of them all. But she was different. Sure, it was the same old night, but when he woke up she was still there. She let him make her breakfast, He thought, maybe, someone was finally going to save him from this horrible existence of suffering and hiding.

But of course not.

"You do realize you're like, a common whore now, riiiiiiight?" She let him clean the dishes. "And you're not even legal. You could go to jaaaaail~!" Somehow, her amusement at the whole thing was both infuriating and endearing. he just wanted her to wrap him up and say she would take him out of this wretched cycle. But she wasn't. She was still the same bluh bluh huge bitch as junior high; but at least she didn't lie about it. She had calmly got up from Eridan's kitchen table, gave him a sad, yet cocky sort of smirk, and told him she had just come to see if her little Erdian had really become a sex maniac. There may have been a bit of pity, he wasn't sure. After a few more sip;s of coffee and a hearty laugh, she left his house.

Eridan didn't know how to get out. People kept coming to him. he couldn't say no. Even the ones who he would never guess would be so desperate were. He was lowering his standards. He was making himself a mat to step on. He was becoming the pathetic prince. Sometimes he still dreamed Feferi would come back, maybe even out of a new-found curiosity like the others, but stay with him, and fall in love again, and save him. But he knew it wasn't going to happen; not with the looks she gave him, the sad, disappointed ones. He liked to think some were even guilty, but he may have been kidding himself.

He was still the laughingstock, just like back then, but now it was for something so much more humiliating, some much less ignorable. He had changed. He wasn't the childish, desperate, dramatic kid he was in junior high. He was a man who hid his heart in a shell to mold in the darkness, who wore a fake smile, he didn't feel strong, brave, or powerful. He felt pompous only as a defense, he felt chained by the world he loved so much. He was so consumed with hate, so much more than junior high, where he would make doomsday devices but never employ them. now it was the other way around.

And he couldn't save himself. He was far too deep in it now. Too caught up in the cycle, too wrapped up in the starvation, too hungry to lift himself from the hole he had dug.

He needed to ask someone to save him, but he didn't know who to trust, Not when everyone was a potential offender.

It was already winter of his freshman year when any new hope came to him, although he didn't recognize it. It came in the form of an extremely antisocial boy who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Someone caught up in a cycle oh his very own, one completely formed around himself.

Someone Eridan had grown to hate a long time ago.

((Hey guys! This is one of few times I've tried doing something that spans more than one chapter, and one of my only AUs, so I may need help with this! If you have any ideas for how the story goes, please review. I hope you support me in this sort of unconventional story exploring the deadly chaos within both Eridan and his 'friend'. Thank you so much for reading! I do not own Homestuck.))


	2. A Car ride, A Glimmer

Eridan was hiding. It had been two weeks of winter already, and Eridan already knew the drill: he would walk out to his fancy sports car, find someone there saying they missed their bus and they were cold, Eridan would offer them a ride, the predictable would occur. He didn't want it today, so he was hiding. It may have been cowardly, but screw it, he wouldn't deal with it today.

So he was hanging out in an empty classroom, doing what little homework he had. Eridan, while seeming useless, was actually incredibly bright when it came to school (as if intelligence meant filling out packets and remembering text book phrases for the test). He was as high in his classes as he was in riches; his family was set, with his marine-biologist father giving Eridan a high step on the social hierarchy. If there was any sort of class-gauge or measuring unit (which, of course, there wasn't), he would be right near the top, with Fef somewhere above him, at the top. He wasn't even sure why she was even _going_ to public school, although the same could be said for him. Sometimes he wished people would advantage of his money and intelligence instead of his body; at least then, he may get a date out of it.

And so, Eridan got through with his homework fast and didn't have much to do. It would be completely stupid to just stand around the school doing nothing, so he got up to head to the out. Probably anyone who had been standing near his car had given up by now.

As he walked out of the building and into a clean blanket of snow, Eridan Ampora _did_ find someone standing out side,m though not near his car. This person just happened to be Sollux Captor.

Eridan _hated_ Sollux Captor.

It wasn't right after Eridan and her had broken up, but by the beginning of their freshman year Feferi and Sollux were going out. Maybe that frustration and jealousy had made Eridan continue his horrible downward spiral after the Roxy Incident. If anything, it definitely helped fuel it's beginnings, and Eridan sort of blamed him for it along with still hating him for being with Fef.

He wanted to walk right on by this guy standing in the snow. He wanted to pass him with his chin up, sneer in some dignified way, and enter the safe, warm confines of his car and proceed to block out the world. On a worse day, when he was feeling a little more angsty and a lot more rage-filled, he may even run over Sollux with his car. But he didn't get to do any of those things, because as soon as his first foot fall sounded with a small crunch of just-fallen snow, Sollux's head whipped up and a lispy little voice cut through the air.

"Hey, Eridan."

He said it less in a rude way and more like a greeting, but that didn't stop Eridan from whipping out a, "Hey yourself, Captor." Before Sollux and Fef had started dating, they were on relatively okay terms. But since then, they had since stopped using the names Sol and ED; it just didn't feel right.

At the moment, Sollux was in some sort of stationary stance that made it seem like he was shuffling from foot to foot anyway, an awkward, timid atmosphere around his nose, red from the cold, frosted-up glasses, and wind-swept hair. He had a light jacket on, and his laptop bag beside him; he was probably staying after to do some coding in the computer lab.

"Uh..." He bit his lip; with his weird teeth, Eridan couldn't tell whether this was an easy task or exceeding difficult. "Could I-"

"You need a ride." Not phrased as a question, but a statement. Sollux Captor needed a ride. The boy in question awkwardly bowed his head.

"I called my dad, but his car got stuck in the snow... It's a piece of crap. Yeah, I need a ride." He shifted his hands into his pockets. "I didn't see anyone else here with a car..."

"How about you just ask Fef?" Eridan sneered, his right foot itching to step forward and walk his right past this pitiful sight.

"Oh, that... It didn't work out. We're not dating anymore." He he really did start shuffling his feet.

"Oh." Eridan didn't know what to say to that. Maybe it was the fact that he was so off guard that he actually relented and let Sollux get into his car. While looking anything but comfortable, he was soon in the passenger seat, clicking on his seat belt as Eridan put the key in the ignition and put it in gear.

"So, how did that happen?" Backing out of the parking space, he started his way out of the lot.

"She just couldn't deal with me. Nothing more than that." Sollux's head was still down, even now, and his words were close to a mumble over the sound of the engine. After the comment, there was a hollow silence, only broken when Eridan cleared his throat.

"Sollux, which way do I turn?" The were at the end of the lot, idling before a street. Started, Sollux quickly answered and Eridan turned into the proper lane. "Geez, keep your head up. You've gotta give me directions."

It turned out Sollux live don the edge of the district, far out of Eridan's way. They would have to stop for gas, Sollux looking down again from his seat while Erdian stood freezing at the pump. During this, Eridan just noticed how damn small the notorious hacker was and may have felt pity for how distant they had become. Before, Sollux surely would have been bad-mouthing Eridan, being the cocky brat he was, so self-fulfilled even though he wasn't much more than lower-middle class. It was kind of disappointing, in it's own right.

"Hey Captor!" Again, there was that frightened, startled look at Sollux snapped his head up to see Eridan tapping on the car window. "I'm going inside to get some coffee, want anythin'?"

"No, that's fine." A bit befuddled by the offer, Sollux watched Eridan shrug, take the pump out of the now-filled car, and walk inside the gas station. He was back shortly and the car was revved to life, bringing them on their way. Only then would Sollix apologize for making Eridan drive such a long way.

"Whatever." Eridan shrugged it off, causing Sollux to finally act a bit more naturally and raise an eyebrow.

"What? Aren't you going to make some stupid joke, and tell me I have to pay you back or something stupid like that?"

If it weren't for the Eridan's reply, he surely would have had to fight the smile caused by Sollux's lisp. "I'm not that desperate anymore." That was a lie. A complete lie. It made Eridan grip the wheel a bit tighter in spite of himself.

"Oh, yeah... I heard about that." Although it was expected, the words still stung a bit. Eridan wouldn't say another word until Sollux was at his house.

When they arrived and Sollux got out of the car, it almost surprised Eridan when he wasn't invited inside, lured in for seduction. It had been a much too familiar scenario by to him by now.

"Thank, Eridan." Sollux got out, and as an afterthought gave a timid, "see you tomorrow," before shutting the car door behind him. Eridan soon was driving home, leaving without incident. No, he hadn't been saved yet, and nothing special had happened, but there was a person that he had hated that may be tolerable, a person who didn't manipulate him, at least for today. There was a message on Trollian telling him 'thank2 again', and there was a glimmer of hope in a lonely world.


	3. A Scapegoat

After being dropped off back home, there wasn't much else to do but think. That, and wait for his dad to call about his car situation, but he figured he had some time to kill. While he admittedly could have been doing something like some more quality coding, he was more inclined to think.

Talking to Erdian had him remembering all sorts of things he had been pushing back. So many events he'd yet to string together just yet. So many loose ends.

In the beginning, everything was okay with Eridan. They were kind of friends, although to Sollux he had been more of pest who was obnoxiously desperate, even going so far as to hit on everyone while in a relationship with Fefferi. Eridan had even hit on _him_. Sollux always though FF was much too good for him, and didn't feel too much pity when she left him; and that pity only lessened when as she and Sollux started dating over the summer. Although he didn't have too much against the guy, he certainly didn't care much; overall, Eridan Ampora he rarely been on his mind during that great summer.

Until things started to go bad.

At first, things weren't bad. He started his first year on the right foot. A confident stride, no less; a beautiful, popular girl hanging on his arm, a new older tone to his age, he felt pretty damn cool.

It didn't take too long to start hearing all the rumors though. They spread like wildfire; all the scandalous and silicious things people were saying Eridan did over the summer. All the people he slept with. _How_ he slept with them; no matter how many times he heard, he could never get over the fact could people even discussed those things.

At first they ignored the comments and went through the days in normalcy, FF brushing the words away as things Eridan would never even think of doing, not even capable of. But it became harder. No matter how absurd the idea, the topic never died down; he was the local hot topic, used as status reports, the common joke, even as dares for other students to try; suddenly that miserable, lonely Eridan was all one ever heard of.

At times, they saw it too; he was different. There was less of that confident, pompous luster; he looked like he had a bit less energy. Most of all, he wasn't even making eye contact with them in the halls, expect for every now and then a seemingly accusing glare and a longing, helpless plea neither of them could answer.

The sad thing was, Sollux actually gravitated toward all of it; attracted as many are to the gruesome destruction of a life, obsessed as many are to pain. He was so interested, so perplexed, so pulled in. He couldn't stop listening. He couldn't look away. He watched Eridan Ampora as his life continued to dissolve and derail. Sollux watched, feeling it start to gnaw away at him. Willing to see anyone's pain than his own.

All of these changes were obviously upsetting. It wasn't like there wasn't already drama in their lives; with their band of friends it was always just a matter of time until something came up, especially during a freshman year. But even through all of it, Sollux got it the hardest. And that meant he couldn't stay in denial. The guilt both him and Fefferi had felt due to these ill-timed changes couldn't be ignored for so long. It started to break Sollux. He began to fall back into his craziness again.

There was bipolar, and voices galore. It got bad. Fefferi, trying to be supportive, was being crushed under the weight of his problems. It was only natural; Sollux's problems were more than anyone could handle. At one point she couldn't deal with it anymore.

Suddenly, Sollux knew what it was like for someone like Fefferi to become tired of you. It was awful. And it only made Eridan's occasional biting words hurt more.

And then they were here. In this time, with an awkward neutral ground. Not spiteful, not friendly. It was a space they could morph and shape at will; it was power, being able to mold their relationship like clay, able to become anything he wanted.

The only thing was what to do with it. Recently, Sollux's life had been spinning on an Eridan-axis, revolving about him. Maybe it was Sollux's own way to cope; escape by obsessing over someone else. Not with Eridan's knowledge, of course. Sollux had been noticing how alike they truly were even past the obvious speech impediment: there was that bond with Fefferi, the bond that was destroyed when they pushed her nurturing too far, leaned with a bit too much weight, depended a bit too much, lost track of the extent of their needs. And though he didn't understand much of it, he was sure they both had their own madness, their own horrible ruts they couldn't get out of. Their cycles.

Maybe they could breach the gap, become friends again. While the thought would have made him shudder before, that was currently not the case. the idea was almost appetizing. Since FF left, he'd had no one to hold him or coddle him. No one to lighten the burden. Sollux had it all. It was heavy, tormenting, dense. Too much.

He needed someone again. Something to do. Something to distract him. A project, an idea.

Maybe he could try to fix Eridan and bring him back to his old, worthless, desperate but slightly-lovable self. Maybe that would make Sollux feel like he was necessary.

And that was it. His decision. A split-second to grab ahold of the rope thrown down to him.

His own glimmer of Hope.

((author's note: Okay guys, the ideas are okay right now, but i feel a writer's block coming on, fast. I am all cool on their idiosyncrasies and the physiology and all that, but if anyone had ideas for any events, it would be much appreciated! Thank you for reading this.))


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